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Sunday, May 19, 2013

Workforce, Part II

** (2 stars out of 5)

Amal Kotay (Chak to his friends) hauls his surgically-disguised butt around evading the Quarren and getting shot. Since Chakotay didn't do his ACTUAL job and point a finger at one of them, Harry Kim and the Doctor waste precious Saving Everybody time arguing over who has command seniority: the guy with triple the experience of any standard Ensign, or the guy with an entire tactical database in his head but no rank at all. Thankfully, the Doctor is NOT the M-5 multitronic unit- who as you'll recall incinerated guys like Harry just by reaching out for a snack. Progress!

Over 140 Voyager-heads are taking what they're given 'cause they're working for a livin'. With Chakotay to kidnap them and speechify, the Doctor to restore their memories from his hidey-hole on a magnetic moon, and Neelix to feed them pancakes and point at their knick-knacks, Donny Most's Diabolical Dysphoria Deceit is soon defeated.

Speaking of knick-knacks, did Tom somehow manage to lose the bat'leth Kohlar gifted to his unborn daughter in only a couple of weeks? There's a more conventional bat'leth hanging in its place.

Janeway flip-flopped in moments from happily living with Jaffen to breaking up with him as soon as it turned out she had a better job waiting. She feeds him a line about how a Captain can't fraternize with her crew, but I guess she either isn't as heart-broken as she appears or she never got the memo back in 2364 that starships carry civilian families all the time.

"Workforce, Part II" again, begs a few questions. How do a people advanced enough to compete with Voyager in space, and outclass them in brain medicine, have the organizational skills and automation-free factories of some backward 20th Century Earth? And in the bigger picture: why not have two episodes back on Earth where everyone kisses the ground after seven years away and see what THAT might have meant to them? And meant to us, the audience?